


Thermotaxia

by eusuchia



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cardassians with feathers and tails, Episode: s05e14 In Purgatory's Shadow, Episode: s05e15 By Inferno's Light, Established Relationship, Established subsequent breakup, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Julian Bashir pain buffet, M/M, Minor Character Death, two dumbasses deeply in love and in pain, xenobiology lite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-25 18:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14384289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eusuchia/pseuds/eusuchia
Summary: “You didn’t suspect?” Bashir said, barely above a whisper. It would have been hard for Garak to hear, were there any other sounds in the room. But there was nothing else and his words hung there, complete in their damning.--Garak and Bashir find each other in the internment camp, and again after their escape. Familiarity, forgiveness, and tending wounds, feat. mild xenobiology





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Illustrations for chapters 3 and 5 can be found [here](https://kaprosuchus.tumblr.com/post/173268098179).
> 
> with thanks to [28ghosts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts) for the beta (and for entertaining my newfound enthusiasm)

Internment Camp 371, as it was so charmingly introduced to him two days ago, was cold. Colder than the station, which already felt nigh on unlivable. Garak pulled his tail close to his legs, keeping the air from snaking between them. He supposed the Jem’Hadar had no need for humane climate control – it seemed nothing hindered them, not weather, nor starvation, nor pain, nor death, nor the lack of anything resembling culture at all beyond their endless hunt.

Walking through the steel gray hall, the brisk air greedily leeching heat from between his scales, Garak wondered what Jem’Hadar art might look like. What their music might sound like. While he wondered, he looked around with quick turns of his head, taking mental snapshots of the dreary building and piecing together a meticulous map in his mind.

For the last day he had digested Martok’s information, mind swirling with thoughts of escape, and below that some humming pride at Martok’s praise of Tain’s ingenuity. It was a bitter pride, of course. But still, hearing a Klingon general admit that his family blood ran sharp and clever was a cheering footnote on this sullen chapter that he tucked neatly away before returning to the immediate present. He would have to get in that crawlspace, a thought he did not relish, but one he relished even less was dying under the watch of these cold people, between these cold walls, on one of these cold beds.

His mind pounced on the new challenge, turning the signal modification over in his head like a puzzle piece – how much information could he risk sending? How would he encode the message for the station – for Odo, more specifically. The other Cardassians around him, he mused, did Tain know them? Could they be used? What about the Tal Shiar? The gears were turning smoothly in his mind as he stood behind Worf in the common area while the others looked ahead, awaiting the release of some unfortunate soul from solitary confinement.

He was so lost in thought that it took him nearly three seconds to recognize the figure being shoved against the wall in front of him. But then a pair of hazel eyes looked up past messy curls of hair and locked with his, and all the gears stopped turning at once.

 _Julian_ , was all the complex machinations of his mind could produce. _Julian._

The young man broke eye contact first – not willingly, as he was butted between the shoulders with a rifle and stumbled forward. Garak exercised every measure of self control at his disposal to keep his head feathers from flaring in an all-too-revealing display of concern. His eyes scanned up and down Bashir’s body looking for any obvious trauma. He could see none, though that was hardly an assurance when he knew better than most that the worst wounds were not external.

He stepped forward calmly and steadied Bashir with a gentle grip on his shoulders. “Doctor,” he said. He maintained his unemotional posture, feeling a dozen pairs of curious Cardassian eyes on his back as he held this haggard looking human in his hands. Bashir stank of his time spent unwashed and holed up, the scent-taste familiar but pungent against his so’c.

Bashir, his posture still hunched and small, looked up at him, disbelief written plain across his gaunt face, dusted with unkempt facial hair and etched with new, weary lines. “Garak,” he answered, hoarse. Garak searched those familiar eyes but found nothing but exhaustion and the bare comfort of recognition – no pleasure, no relief, no answers. Bashir looked over at Worf, then back at Garak. “You’re... here,” he said dimly.

Garak’s gaze flitted up at the Jem’Hadar guards who brought Bashir in from isolation. Their interest had already waned, and they were turning to leave. “Perhaps we’d better go back to the barracks,” he suggested. Bashir nodded, and Garak released him so they could walk side by side, ignoring the sidelong glances of the Cardassians and Romulans lining the short walk back to their room.

 _Julian,_ his useless internal voice murmured again. Julian here meant no Julian on the station. The realization was twisting cruelly as it seated itself in his mind. His hair was longer, his uniform over a month out of date – he remembered the new grey-shouldered jackets efficiently rolled out to all the Federation staff over the course of two days. A _month_ , he screamed at himself.

How could he have not noticed, how, how, _how_? How could he have laid eyes on a pale, empty imitation and not seen through it immediately? How could he have been fooled by a graceless copy of the body he once learned slowly, inch by inch, in comfortable, dark warmth? Of course he knew the answer, and its shamefulness burned as hot as the questions’.

\--

Finally, he and Bashir had a moment nearly alone, sitting side-by-side on the cot farthest from Tain as Worf and Martok left to convene elsewhere. The Breen, too, lay motionless in its cot as ever, but nothing they had to say really concerned it. He and Bashir had shared quiet moments before. But this was something else.

“Are you hurt?” Garak asked, unable to bear the bare-faced silence much longer.

Bashir shook his head. “Not much. They got what they wanted out of me with some kind of neural scan early on.” He sighed, staring hard at his feet. “God knows how long they were observing me before they took me, too.”

“Why were you in isolation?”

Bashir sniffed a humourless laugh. “‘ _Insolence_ ,’ was what they called it.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. I lost track. They didn’t stick to a schedule when they woke me or fed me.”

Garak felt his feathers sleeking back as anger simmered behind his eyes. Bashir could read that expression, he was sure. He didn’t mind letting Bashir know he bristled at the thought of his torture, and wondered what exact kind of hypocrite that made him in the good doctor’s eyes. They said nothing more for a minute.

“You didn’t suspect?” Bashir said, barely above a whisper. It would have been hard for Garak to hear, were there any other sounds in the room. But there was nothing else and his words hung there, complete in their damning.

“I did note that you seemed a bit unlike yourself,” he lied. It didn’t feel convincing. “But I thought, given the way things were between us, that you were simply... distancing yourself.”

Bashir frowned. “It was distancing itself from you? Wouldn’t that be suspicious? We were still meeting up when I was kidnapped.”

“We met for our weekly lunch. But you – the changeling – didn’t seem to have your usual appetite for conversation.” Another lie. The changeling had done an admirable job imitating Bashir’s brash viewpoints on literature, even sarcastically quoting Garak’s own words from previous debates. Their arguments edged on flirtatious once or twice, to Garak’s shameful delight. Was he so weak-willed now that being flirted with was all it took to dull his observational sense?

“You should have known,” Bashir said, not looking at him, his voice tight with despairing anger.

Garak swallowed his shame. “I should have. I’m sorry, Doctor.” The words felt weak and meaningless. They must have felt that way to Bashir too.

Still, Bashir’s disappointment hurt less than the forced blankness that barely disguised grief when he visited Garak in his private cell months ago. With a trembling hand, he had pushed a small box of Delavian chocolates through the food slot. He wouldn’t quite meet his eyes, delivering a flat, well-rehearsed monologue to the wall behind Garak’s head. Bashir told him he valued his company, would drop by the cell after they’d both had some time to process things. He told him he understood his actions, might even forgive him someday. But all the same, he was telling him that he couldn’t stand to be touched by hands that had intended genocide, and his own death alongside it.

Garak was expecting it – had been expecting it for a long time, wondering when the young man would finally realize he could choose from a myriad of better offers. But expecting it did nothing to dull the cold knives that cut cruelly at him, or to stop the walls of the cell from creeping closer and closer around him as Bashir’s voice echoed long after he walked away.

Once he was released from his cell, he relentlessly snuffed out the embers of longing that flickered to life when he flashed Bashir that empty, practiced smile over their replicated lunches, pretending that he could so easily return to the way things were. For long hours of those weeks, Garak sunned himself in the searing multiplicity of his failure – he was caught, he was stopped, he wasn’t fast or clever enough to orchestrate his martyrdom. In one fell strike he had failed Tain, failed Cardassia, failed the Alpha Quadrant altogether. And in his half-finished work he had failed Bashir too, failed to place his hand securely over the boy’s eyes before he could slide the knife into his spine.

So one afternoon, when the changeling clapped a hand companionably on Garak’s upper arm, it soothed a balm over the pathetic, aching pain that clung in his chest. He thought for a moment that perhaps it could work. Perhaps he could forget the sound of honeyed moans, the splay of long limbs under a gentle cast of starlight, the warm, sleepy embrace of a curiously beautiful alien. Perhaps he could retrain himself to be sated by that which had sated him before – nothing more than good company and conversation.

“Garak?” He realized Bashir had been speaking – mumbling was more like it, and his Cardassian ears simply let the sounds slip over him like susurrating wind. And he realized with greater alarm that Bashir was touching him. The slightest brush, the backs of his slender fingers against the side of Garak’s knee, and suddenly they seemed to be sitting much too close together. Garak shifted fractionally, pulling his leg barely out of reach. Bashir withdrew his hand to his lap at once.

“I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot on my mind the last day or two,” he said dryly, casting a meaningful look over at Tain. Convenient, for once.

“Ah. Right,” Bashir said softly, apologetically. He regretted his own words immediately – he didn’t deserve that tone of voice, shouldn’t be pulling sympathy from the man he had betrayed. “Should we take a walk?”

They left the room, and Garak forced his mind to pick up the dropped pieces of the puzzle it had been considering to distract himself. He supplemented his mental map of the compound as they paced a slow, quiet lap around the building. He imagined Tain scheming and plotting escape for two years in this miserable place.

After a few minutes Bashir broke the silence. “You talked to him? Tain?”

Garak nodded. He thought of telling Bashir the truth. How he wished Tain were lucid so he could be told what to do. How just being in the same room as his father bowed his will, even his hatred, in deference. How he ached to be Tain’s hand again even with his dulled, old claws. But Bashir wouldn’t understand. The haughty Human never bent to authority, never let himself be wielded as a finely tuned instrument, and would never feel the satisfaction it could grant. He would knit his brow with condescending kindness and try to remind him what a cruel man Enabran Tain was, as if Garak didn’t know better than anyone.

What would the Doctor understand, then? Some inner conflict. Some resentment. And Garak had those in spades. “All my life, I’ve done nothing but try to please that man. I let him mold me, let him turn me into a mirror image of himself. And how did he repay me? With exile.” The Bashir he knew before would have been rapt with attention at this personal divulgence, scrutinizing his face to discern truth from lie. But the Bashir in front of him, tired and empty, kept his glassy gaze unfocused.

“But I forgave him. And here, in the end, I thought maybe...” Bashir lifted his eyes to meet his. “Maybe he could forgive me.” And he realized that past the melodrama he laid on in an attempt to liven the dullness in Bashir’s face, it was true. He truly had been fool enough to believe there might be closure waiting for him at the end of this chapter.

And what had that miserable admission earned him? Nothing, not even a twitch of a sympathetic smile tugging at the corners of that soft, achingly familiar mouth. It seemed even the little candle in his relentlessly cold world had gone out, a dim ember cooling at the tip of its wick.

Bashir stared through him. “From what I’ve seen of him over the past month, he doesn’t come across as the forgiving type.”

He couldn’t help a terse laugh at that, but Bashir still wasn’t smiling. Had a month really wilted that sunny spirit so completely? He was torn between contempt and despair, fighting the urge to wrap the young man in his arms, stroke his hand soothingly across the tense lines of his shoulders. But even if Bashir wanted comfort, he wouldn’t want it from him.

“I’ve been a fool,” Garak sighed. “Let this be a lesson to you, Doctor – perhaps the most valuable I could ever teach you.” He let his head feathers flare back to underline his sincerity as he leaned in. “Sentiment is the greatest weakness of all.”

“If that’s true, it’s a lesson I’d rather not learn.” Bashir’s brow pulled together in a frown, his lips pressed into a defiant line, and Garak could feel the tiniest lick of heat as his candle flickered to life again.


	2. Chapter 2

It was almost soothing, how stubbornly familiar Tain was even in this unfamiliar place, naming his enemies and nodding with professional satisfaction at reports of their demise. Garak could almost forget where they were, could almost shrug off the enveloping cold and hear the evening chorus of insects outside Tain’s library window. But Tain’s nictitating eyelids blinked at random across his useless eyes as if to clear the fog away, and each breath came as a painful, rattling hiss. And though Garak wished he could take some twisted pleasure in the moment, it simply hurt to watch.

He could see the life slipping from Tain and knew he had to try now or never, knew that somehow even minutes from death the man would have him beg for a mile before giving an inch. “ _Yadik_ ,” he said softly, the word sitting like a hard lump on his tongue. “Father, you’re dying. For once in your life... speak the truth.”

“I should have killed your mother before you were born.” Garak felt a laugh threatening to slip through his teeth. He had asked for truth, and here it was. “You have always been a weakness I can’t afford.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d done it, not really. Why he had decided Bashir should sit in quiet witness as he tried to pull consolation from a dying man’s lips – whether it was for his own masochistic gratification, or a poisoned gift of insight he was trying to give Bashir. He supposed he would have plenty of time to contemplate the depths of this particular weakness later.

“So you’ve told me. Many times.” It was curious how the barbs no longer stung, Tain’s last weak stabs at his heart oddly comforting in their uselessness. He found himself smiling.He supposed that in a way, it would be a kindness to let Tain die hearing him grovel. And he certainly had nothing left to lose in the exchange. “Listen, Enabran... All I ask is that for this moment, let me be your son.”

Perhaps Tain realized there was no point in fighting it now. The translucent secondary eyelids slid closed, finally relaxing a lifetime’s vigilance.“Elim... remember that day in the country? You must have been almost five.”

Garak’s eyes fixed on Tain’s as he stared out unseeing. The scent-taste of the grass, the shrieking peals of laughter, the sting of his scraped hands and knees, the burning pride, hot as the summer sun, when he finally conquered his hound. “How can I forget it? It was the only day.”

“I can still see you on the back of that riding hound. You must’ve fallen off a dozen times. But you never gave up.”

“I remember limping home.” He hesitated to speak it into fact. “You held my hand.”

But Tain didn’t argue, didn’t deny that little memory Garak clutched close, a pale flower pressed flat between the pages of his childhood. He simply tilted his chin in a weary half-nod. “I was very proud of you, that day.”

And Enabran Tain died. Garak’s head swam thick with unintelligible feeling as he pulled in a sharp breath, let the scent roll over his so’c and committed it to memory – Tain’s smell, familiar even through the sickly waft of living rot. An unconscious part of him knew he had duty to perform, and he stood calmly. He pulled the sheet up over Tain’s face, shielding him from alien eyes. “May the moons hide you,” he murmured.

There was so much more to say, but it seemed wrong to give him his rites in this place, when his body would surely be whisked away by Jem’Hadar in a final indignity. He would do what remained if – not if, _when_ , he chided himself – he returned to Cardassia Prime, under the shifting shadows of triadic moonlight with soft, warm earth beneath his feet. Even without a corpse, even if no one else was there to bury his father’s memory with him, it was the least Tain deserved after a lifetime of servitude to the Union.

He realized Bashir was standing behind him, awfully close. He turned, blanking his expression. It didn’t take much effort, as he felt his heart tugged in ten directions as once, unable to settle on any one feeling. “Garak...” his eyes were questioning.

“There, Doctor,” he said mildly. “See what sentiment has earned me.”

“He didn’t deny you.”

“No, I suppose not, in the end.” The gentleness in Bashir’s expression was unbearable, and Garak turned away, looking back at the shape of Tain’s body hidden beneath the blanket. “When it no longer counted for anything.”

“It counted for something to you. Didn’t it?”

He exhaled in a hiss. “I haven’t quite decided yet.”

He turned back, and Bashir’s eyes were infinite in their concern. How this wisp of a man had escaped his first encounter with Tain unscathed he still couldn’t quite conceive. “Doctor, tell me something. When you made your foolhardy trip to the Arawath Colony those years ago...” He lilted his voice in such a way that he hoped Bashir could hear the _thank you_ behind it. “What did you really make of Tain?”

Bashir’s frowned in a way that clearly read _‘this is_ _what you want to talk about_ _right now?’_ But the Doctor was nothing if not obliging. “I hated him, Garak.”

“Hate is rather unbecoming on you.” Now there was a lie as blatant as the beautifully tense lines that appeared on Bashir’s forehead as he scowled.

“I thought you’d be happy to find I’m capable of it. Don’t take it personally, but I’d scarcely met men more hateable than Enabran Tain. And now, looking back and knowing he said those things about his own son...”

It did rankle, hearing the blithe way he disparaged Tain. But he could hardly fault Bashir for his opinion, and perhaps, if he were wiser and freer, he could feel the same. “What things?”

“I don’t think you need to hear them from me.”

Bashir was right, of course. He didn’t need a recitation, and the Human’s lovely voice would only sharpen the edge of those words. But some part of him was greedy, wanted to sit and let the words cut deep, luxuriating in the pain – because Tain was _dead,_ and he could just glance at the corpse in the corner to release himself. The thought was startling and he dared to repeat it to himself. Tain was dead, damnation and salvation all washed away at once.

“And now, Doctor? Do you still hate him?”

“He was appalling, manipulative, self-serving, up to the end. He would have killed either of us in the a blink of an eye if it gave him some edge.” Garak tilted his head in acknowledgment. “I want to hate him. But you don’t.”

“And that matters enough to sway your opinion?”

Bashir laughed then, such an unexpected burst of clear, melodic sound that Garak nearly stepped back. Instead he blinked his confusion, let his tail flick thoughtfully. “If you have to ask that after five years, perhaps your interrogative judgment of character isn’t as sharp as it used to be.”

Garak narrowed his eyes. This was just unfair. How could Bashir just stand there and laugh, not knowing – or worse, perhaps he _did_ know – how the sound churned his heart. And what was that supposed to mean, exactly, the insinuation that Garak’s opinion would shape Bashir’s? All their arguments had never revealed such a weakness of conviction in the young man, even in the earliest days. There was simply too much going on in his mind to unravel this curious little puzzle at the moment, and hearing the start of a word on Bashir’s lips, Garak found himself relieved when Martok and Worf entered  and interrupted him.


	3. Chapter 3

The light went out. _I can’t see. I can’t move. I can’t see. I can’t move_. His vision narrowed, darkness creeping up from the edges and sliding its fingers over his eyes. His secondary eyelids tried futilely to blink away the blackness. He felt his body going numb, tried moving his arms and tail to waken them, some dim part of him realizing he was thrashing against the walls but unable to stop. _Stop it, stop it, stop, stop, stop, stop..._ his tongue flickered against thin air as he gasped frantically, unable to draw in enough to clear his spinning head. He could feel his feathers pulling in every direction, reaching, seeking like his senseless hands.

Bashir’s voice echoed meaninglessly down the crevice, skittered past his ears. Bashir’s smell clipped the edge of his tongue. But he couldn’t see, couldn’t taste, couldn’t call out. “Garak. Garak!” A hand reached out from the darkness and caught his tail mid-lash, soothed it down, then gripped his shoulder. “Shh, shh... You’re making too much noise.”

His vision swam and he was clawing at the inside of a closet door, he was scrabbling for air through the debris of a collapsing building, everything was pressing in, squeezing the breath from him, he was dying, _he was dying_ \- “Elim,” an alien voice murmured against his ear, cutting through the thick air. “It’s me. Shh. It’s me. It’s Julian. You’re alright...”

He felt the hand slip from his shoulder, followed by the strangely faraway feeling of soft, slender fingers folding around his claws, squeezing a small reassurance. The tightness in his chest relaxed fractionally, and he gulped down a tense breath as he closed his eyes, focusing on the sensation in his fingers. Patiently, the warmth of the hand around his led him from the depths. He followed the heat like a _scottril_ hunting by scent in the dark. “Julian,” his clumsy tongue finally managed. “The light... the light went out.”

“I know. It’s okay. Come with me.” Bashir’s hand tugged at his, and he waded slowly toward the sun.

\--

He might as well have teleported into the cot for all he could remember. All he knew was that he had failed. And that he was getting awfully tired of having his deepest secrets dragged out of him in this accursed place. He stared at the wall, sometimes drifting off for a few uncomfortable minutes before being jerked back into wakefulness by his spiteful mind.

He was wide awake and facing the wall when Bashir came to drape his own blanket over him. He thought about throwing both sheets of thin, useless fabric to the ground. The last thing he deserved was to be taken care of, now that he had damned them all. Surely even the doe-eyed Bashir he met years ago, with his infinite magnanimity, could have seen that much. He should be left to freeze to death where his father died. At least there was some poetry in that.

But Bashir sat on the next cot over, slumped against the wall, and looked at him. “I know you’re awake,” he said flatly. “I figured out how to see through that particular lie a year ago.”

Garak sighed, tilted his head back so he could meet the Doctor’s eyes. “What gives me away?”

Bashir’s lips quirked as he pointed to the back of Garak’s head. “Your feathers. When you’re asleep you stop controlling them so they flutter around a little. Sometimes your tail twitches too.”

“I see.” Garak scowled. It took years of careful training to learn to control the normally involuntary, emotional movements of his plumage. He had used that control to great effect as an interrogator, that calm, unnatural stillness striking the average Cardassian as deeply unsettling. Leave it to the Doctor to find a way to use it against him, of course.

“Look, Garak... the last few days can’t have been easy. I just-” Bashir looked away. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.”

Garak stared, hearing but not really comprehending. “I don’t think it would be wise to add to the debt I owe you already, my dear Doctor. It’s insurmountable as it is. Besides,” he added gently, “I doubt you’ve had the easiest week yourself.”

“Well, I haven’t watched my father die, and I haven’t had a panic attack trapped in the wall of a prison camp.”

“So far.”

“So far,” Bashir agreed with a wry smile. “But I guess you’re right. We’re two miserable peas in a pod.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Bashir laughed, leaning his head back against the wall. “Just rest, Garak. We’ll figure something out tomorrow.”

“You know, your stubborn refusal to give up that ungainly Federation optimism might be heartening, were it not so terribly misguided.”

“I know,” Bashir said, and his smile took on a different colour.

Garak considered the man sitting next to him. His gaze traced over the lines framing those deep, hooded eyes, the rough bristle across his jaw, the tight angles of his gaunt face lit severely by the lights above. No, Bashir was no longer that bright-eyed bird who first enchanted him with a pretty but insubstantial song – the melody he started humming in Garak’s heart now was dark and true, and he longed to hear the rest.

“You should get some rest as well, Doctor.” Garak indicated the cot Bashir was sitting on with a nod. “Lay down. So you and your optimism have enough energy to produce the necessary miracle to get us out of here.”

Bashir scoffed a laugh, but shook his head. “I can’t... I mean you’re right. But I can’t.”

“Can’t what, exactly?”

“Lay down.” Garak frowned, waiting for elaboration as Bashir stared vacantly across the room. He sighed after a moment, his voice tense. “In isolation. They didn’t let me lay down.” No further explanation followed.

Some part of Garak started to catalogue the ways the Jem’Hadar might have managed that without entering the cell, but it was a bleak matter for another time. “Well in that case, stay sitting and let’s hope both of us can overcome our neuroses long enough to nod off.”

Bashir smiled, fondly this time, and Garak marvelled at how uniquely helpless he felt under that smile. He watched the doctor stand and tug the cot closer so it abutted Garak’s, end to end. He sat back down, now just mere inches away.

Wordlessly, Bashir lay his hand on Garak’s pillow, just in front of his nose, palm facing up. He could feel the edge of heat lapping out at him, that inefficient mammalian metabolism never ceasing to amaze. Tentatively he raised his own hand toward it, and Bashir’s only reaction was to close his eyes and lean his head back against the wall, letting his shoulders relax with a small “hmph.”

Garak pressed the heels of their palms together, and slim fingers curled around his wrist. He responded in kind, his clawed digits curving carefully to meet the other man’s pulse, beating most unwisely close to the surface of that delicate skin. He closed his eyes, sneaking in a small breath to let the smell of him roll over his tongue. “Goodnight, Garak,” Bashir sighed, his voice already drooping with sleep.

“Goodnight, Doctor.” And he was surprised to feel an answering tug of drowsiness at the corner of his mind.


	4. Chapter 4

Bashir didn’t relax an inch until he finally stepped through threshold of docking port five and found solid ground underfoot. Even as they had neared the wormhole on the Gamma Quadrant side and the odds climbed miraculously in their favour, it didn’t seem true until he was through that circular door.

The station felt different. The new uniforms, for one. It seemed unfair that they had seen fit to redress the entire set while he had been taking his untimely intermission, almost as if they were trying to disorient him on purpose. Far too bright, for another. Bashir squinted into the light of the Promenade as they made their way to the infirmary.

Nurse Jabara was waiting for them, escorting the two Klingons and the Romulan, Kalenna, to the biobeds in the trauma unit while Garak was given a once-over by a nervous-looking orderly. Bashir made his way to the lab and sat heavily at one of the data analysis consoles, letting his heels scuff against the floor. He leaned his head back, looking up at the criss-crossing lines of tiles and ventilation ducts cutting through the ceiling. He was as intimately familiar with this chair as any person on the station, and yet somehow it seemed... wrong. The padding of the seat too comfortable and well-worn, the curvature of the back to meet his spine too gentle. He stood up after a minute.

Garak was sitting patiently on the examination bed in the next room, his clawed feet dangling over the edge. The young orderly went through a cursory examination, seeming to want to be anywhere except pinned in place by the Cardassian’s cool stare. They noted down the physical results – nothing evidently wrong, of course, corroborating the thorough medical report Bashir had prepared during the trip home when he was trying to keep his mind occupied. “Mx. Kariuki,” Bashir sighed. “I’ll take it from here.”

“My dear Doctor, I don’t believe you’ve been cleared for duty just yet,” Garak said with an amused smile.

“My dear Mister Garak, the number of years I spent in medical school rather outnumbers the weeks I spent locked up, so I _do_ believe you’ll take my informed opinion.” He put his hand out expectantly, and Kariuki wavered for a moment before setting the medical tricorder in it and bobbing their head as they made a hasty retreat.

Bashir made a show of waving the tricorder quickly in front of Garak’s face, then glanced at the readout. “Hm. It says, ‘turn up the heat in your quarters and get some rest.’”

“Ah.” Garak nodded sagely, still seated primly on the bed with his tail curled lazily beside him and his hands in his lap. “A miracle of modern medicine, that device. What else does it say?”

Bashir squinted at the display as if studying the data intently. “It says, ‘I would prescribe counselling but I don’t want to be held responsible for what happens to the counsellors.’”

“I do prefer to be the one asking the questions.”

“To be perfectly honest, I’d be more concerned about you giving too many answers.” He turned to the analysis console and put the tricorder back in its proper drawer.

“Ah, well, we Cardassians are slightly on the talkative side.” Bashir bit down a laugh. “It’s simply hard to resist a bit of performance when you have a captive audience. You understand.”

“Being captive? I’ve had some recent experience in that department.” Bashir smiled. It was just so _like_ Garak, for things between them to feel both more settled and more strange than ever.

He wanted to say so many things at once but couldn’t decide where to start. Here was a man who had killed remorselessly, who had slid his hands and tongue over his body with palpable reverence, who had tried to commit genocide and destroy a planet while he was on it, who had let him in, however briefly, to a deep chamber in a fortress of lies and half-truths. Bashir’s hands ached to hold Garak’s again, to soothe away the coldness and forgive him all over again with gentle caresses. But they also despaired at him, for all the old reasons and some newer.

He turned around still smiling, only to notice with sudden clarity that the centrifuge on the counter behind Garak wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It was a minor detail, and it made sense. The device’s new position was closer to the corresponding sequencer console. Jabara – or his replacement changeling – had probably shifted it over simply to save the annoyance of shuffling back and forth. But the room felt unbalanced.

Some of that unease must have made its way to his face, judging by the way Garak stood up and looked at him. “Everything alright, Doctor?”

He blinked, grounding himself in those icy blue eyes. He knew where he was. He knew who he was. And in front of him was, at least, a face he knew too. He exhaled. “Just a passing...” He waved his hand noncommittally. “I should check in with Nurse Jabara and turn in. You too. We’re both reporting to Captain Sisko in the morning.”

“Of course.” A pair of nictitating membranes blinked back at him. Garak collected his things and let himself out, saying nothing more but casting a last indecipherable look in Bashir’s direction at the door.

Bashir rubbed at his eyes, heading to the trauma unit where Jabara was programming the osteo-regenerative routine of Worf’s biobed. Martok stood watchfully in a corner, and the Romulan was sitting up in her biobed, flicking through a PADD. “Doctor,” Martok growled, a fond smile appearing on the General’s face.

“Doctor,” Jabara echoed, though her expression was harder to read. “General Martok and Kalenna have already been assigned quarters. But I’d like to keep Commander Worf here overnight.”

Bashir nodded, approaching the Klingon on the biobed. “He’ll need it. I did as much as I could with the trauma kit on the runabout.”

“And you did as much as you could when we had nothing at all,” Martok said proudly, clapping Bashir on the shoulder a bit too hard. “Don’t think I forgot about having you written into the song, Doctor.”

“Can’t wait to hear it,” Bashir laughed. Having the confidence of a Klingon General was something that would take getting used to. “Jabara, I’ll drop by tomorrow morning after the debrief with Captain Sisko. You can get me up to speed then.”

She opened her mouth to speak, then hesitated. Bashir raised an eyebrow questioningly. “Sorry. I have to keep reminding myself it wasn’t you I was reporting to for the last month. Just have to get used to the idea that you… weren’t you.”

“For you and me both,” he sighed. “I’m going to have to field a lot of strange looks, aren’t I?”

She gave him a bit of a pitying smile. “Maybe not. The shapeshifter was pretty convincing…”

Bashir filled in the blank. _So it will be like nothing changed at all_. The thought rang through his mind, much sharper and clearer now that he was back home – he hadn’t been missed the whole time he was kept in maddening deprivation in a windowless cell. Nobody had thought of him.

His clenched his teeth and swallowed the lump in his throat with a nod.

\--

03:42. Bashir sighed, bouncing the tennis ball off the wall again and again with a rhythmic dyad of thumps.

He was sitting cross-legged on his bed. He felt lighter and cleaner, having luxuriated in a long, hot shower and a close shave as soon as he’d reentered his quarters. When he looked at himself in the mirror, he saw something he almost recognized. But he didn’t feel any more at ease, finally being at home in his comfortable clothes on his comfortable furniture. Not when he knew the changeling had been here, had probably rested in a gelatinous state in this very room. Not when reclining even slightly on the bed sent a flinch of phantom pain up his spine. Not when he couldn’t stop imagining closing his eyes and reopening them in the camp.

He had the lights on low and Bajoran folk music playing almost inaudibly, unable to tolerate the complete blackness and silence that used to send him off to sleep. He whipped the ball hard this time, sending it shooting back directly toward his face, and his reflexes snapped his hand shut around it a centimeter from his nose. He knew at this point that he should either dose himself with a sedative or get up and do some work, as sleep was unlikely to present itself without provocation.

He got up, stretched his legs, walked to his desk and realized, for once, he didn’t know what to work on. His formal report wouldn’t be accepted until after his psych evaluation, and besides he was not itching to relive his internment in careful detail just yet. He couldn’t muster the energy to refamiliarize himself with the prion replication experiments he had been running before his capture. And of course, he couldn’t comment on cases that had been processed in his absence. At some point, he would have to read the changeling’s reports, and shuddered to think that it had done his job, taking his patients’ lives in its hands, for _weeks_.

He leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. It staggered him that even Jabara was convinced. Jabara, who had worked at his side through more near-misses and miracles than he could count. Was he so replaceable that a person-shaped pile of goo could really perform his duties?

No. It wasn’t possible. He would listen to the changeling’s medical logs tomorrow, hear his own voice describing things he did not do. He would find mistakes. He would think of better solutions to the cases it had handled. He would not give the thing the satisfaction, would not be so easily imitated.

But did it matter? When his colleagues and friends hadn’t batted an eyelash? He groaned with frustration, standing and pacing around the room. He thought about his double in the holosuite with Miles. Trading gossipy whispers over drinks with Jadzia. Arguing flirtatiously over lunch with Garak.

He thought about that stunned look in Garak’s eyes in the internment camp. Under different circumstances he would have crowed his victory over the Cardassian as he stood there thinking he was keeping himself under implacable control. Bashir had seen the ripple through his head feathers, the dilation of his pupils, the nearly imperceptible slackness of his jaw. It was all there – he had truly surprised Garak. But the moment passed, his heart plummeted with realization, and there bloomed a cold fury that surprised himself in turn.

He had hoped Garak would come once Tain configured the transmitter, had murmured the closest thing to prayer his tongue could manage as he stared up into pitch blackness in his cell. He had imagined the tale Garak would spin on their comfortable return home, the way his lips would graze his ear as he explained how he had planned a rescue as soon as he saw through the fraudulent copy, describing the minor detail that had first alerted his trained senses.

Instead, betrayal burned a hole in him as they sat in that bunker together. Garak’s feathers flattened back with shame and Bashir wanted to scream.

Then Tain had died. He realized the other man had exposed a facet of himself, was asking to be witnessed. And then he witnessed something else, pulling Garak from the space between the walls and calming his panicked claws, slipping back into the role of confidante, of Doctor. The spite receded, and he filed his anger coolly away when Garak had needed him. Because what was he, if not a man who went wherever he was needed?

He left his quarters without dwelling too long on the decision, giving himself only a moment to change from his pyjamas into trousers and a loose shirt. He paced down the corridor toward the turbolift, briefly considering taking it to the Promenade to circle it a few times among the other strange or lonely souls up at this hour. But when the doors hissed closed, he directed the lift to Habitat Level 4.

Garak would be awake. The Cardassian claimed to be no slave to habit or predictability, but Bashir had long ago tabled his normal sleeping schedule, as well as a few variants. Unlike many humanoids, Cardassian physiology did not demand nightly entry to a “charmingly vulnerable, comatose-like state” as Garak had once described it. Even during convalescence from illness, Cardassians were essentially incapable of sleeping for more than two hours at a time, but in turn would sleep two or three times a day. The memory of seeing Garak curled up under a heat lamp in his shop for the first time was one Bashir treasured and returned to now and again.

He was thinking of it when he pressed the chime on Garak’s door. “May I help you?” the tinny voice from the panel asked.

“It’s me.”

“How enlightening,” the panel said before the door slid open, letting warm, humid air breathe over him. He found the heat unusually inviting, after enduring weeks of unforgiving cold in the internment camp. He could only imagine how miserable it had been for the Cardassians there. “Ah, Doctor,” Garak called pleasantly. “You’re looking much more yourself.”

He scanned the room briefly. Still the same studio suite with the same furnishings, he was relieved to observe. He realized this was the first time he had been in Garak’s quarters since – he stopped short. Since they broke up. It was almost funny to think of it that way, to look at the trained killer in front of him and apply the label ‘ex-boyfriend’ in his mental catalogue.

Bashir stepped in through the door and let it shut behind him, hiding him away from the rest of the station – the rest of the galaxy, with all its cruel, cold cleverness.

Garak was reclining on his sofa with a PADD in hand – in tail, more precisely, as was his habit, leaving his more dexterous appendages free to attend other concerns. Currently, the pressing concerns were a near-empty glass of kanar and something cylindrical that he didn’t quite recognize, though by the way Garak cradled it against his temperature-sensitive _chula_ through his shirt, he could guess at its purpose. “You know, I could give you the replicator pattern for what we medical professionals concisely call ‘emergency temperature regulation materiel.’ You could make a nice set of pyjamas.”

“My dear Doctor,” Garak sighed dramatically, his tail lowering the PADD to the side table. “What little reputation I have on this station I must endeavour to preserve. I couldn’t be caught dead wearing something that... crinkles in such a way,” he said with an emphatic flick of his tail.

Garak set the glass and the warmer down alongside the PADD and stood up. “But I don’t imagine you came here at 0400 hours to give me medical advice on thermoregulation.”

“No, I... I couldn’t sleep.”

“I don’t find that especially surprising. Though I _am_ surprised your insomnia brought you here.” Garak came closer, the Cardassian-setting lights casting a reddish glow around him as he scrutinized Bashir with shrewd eyes. Bashir noticed Garak had cleaned up too – he smelled faintly of a floral scale ointment he favoured, his feathers invitingly glossy and groomed. He wished he hadn’t noticed.

“I couldn’t...” He didn’t want this to be difficult. He just wanted to have company, to not be angry, to pretend that he wasn’t afraid his voice would meet the walls of an empty room, echoing back at him in darkness. It should have been easy to say as much, but his throat tightened around the words. “I couldn’t be alone. I just wanted to talk. If that’s alright.”

The Cardassian tilted his head and smiled, a ripple running through that iridescent black plume to catch a glimmer of red light. “When could I ever be accused of being untalkative, my dear Doctor?” He gestured to the sofa.

Bashir exhaled with an answering smile, but he paused before sitting down. “Could I be Julian again? Just for a while.”

Garak stiffened. Maybe that was the last straw, pushing this from uncomfortably familiar to truly inappropriate. But would Garak, too, go where he was needed? “Doctor,” Garak said cautiously, an unreadable expression passing through his feathers, some of it even making its way to his eyes. “We’ve been through a lot these last few days.”

“Yes, we have.” Bashir stared into those eyes, hoped he was living up to the searching intensity he saw in them. “And I don’t want to go through more without you.”

He put his hand up, fingers outstretched. Garak’s eyes flitted from his face to his hand and then back again. After a moment he returned the gesture, pressing his hand against Bashir’s. The cool, scaled surface of Garak’s palm fit neatly into the concavity of his own, and black claws reached slightly over his fingertips. “Julian,” Garak said softly. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I hope so too.” They stood toe-to-toe in the dim room. “I meant what I said before. I just want to talk. But I don’t want to pretend we’re nothing more than friends. Not after we’ve... seen each other.”

“In ways neither of us are particularly happy to have been seen.” Garak nodded in understanding as they parted hands.

Bashir knew his internment left him touch-starved, especially now that he was safely home on the station, the exhilaration of escape ebbing and leaving a rather banal loneliness in its wake. But knowing didn’t make the feeling any less desperate, didn’t stop him from imagining curling up in Garak’s strong arms, feeling reassuring weight and warmth pressing down on every inch of his body.

He trusted the Cardassian to maintain a cover, to slip easily into conversation as if they this were an everyday occasion. But he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to do the same, especially when Garak was so very near, his eyes so very cutting, and his lips so very slightly parted.

He broke eye contact and walked to Garak’s replicator. “Fanalian toddy, double, seventy degrees. Anything for you?”

“No, thank you.” Bashir heard the cushions of the sofa shifting behind him as Garak seated himself. He collected his drink and sat next to Garak, who picked up his warmer and pressed it to his chest. “So what shall we talk about?”

Bashir took a thoughtful sip of his toddy, savouring the burning edge of the sweet drink. “What were we reading five weeks ago?”

Garak hummed. “Cekol’s _Dawn Over Avenal_. My favourite, though you failed to see why. Or so you claimed.”

He leaned back against the sofa with a smile. He had genuinely enjoyed the series of Cardassian adventure stories, especially since they conjured a most endearing image of a young Garak reading the serials with devotion as they were published. Cekol’s stories were action-filled historical fiction – pulpy, almost, though he wouldn’t risk describing them as such within earshot of the Cardassian.

“Maybe the patriotic themes were a bit lost on me.”

Garak let out a long-suffering sigh. “They tend to be, my dear.”

“Well, I did like the climactic fight with the Tzenkethi. Though I could have done without quite as much technical detail. Three and a half pages on a single manoeuvre, even one as interesting as clubhauling a space freighter...”

“Clubhauling?” Garak repeated curiously.

“I don’t expect that one’s in the translator dictionary. An old human nautical term. Dropping anchor while sailing to turn the ship suddenly. It’s a risky manoeuvre, see, since you have to lose the anchor, and the ship might tear itself apart in the process.”

“I see the analogy. The _Kantharn_ nearly splits itself down the middle when it swings around the Tzenkethi cruiser. But how comes a humble doctor to know such a term?”

Bashir smiled sheepishly. “I think I’ve mentioned how my father tends to pick up new hobbies and pet interests. For a while it was nautical history. The age of sail. It was one of the few things he picked up that I got interested in too. There were these old novels about an English sea captain and his friend the ship’s surgeon...” A grin crept onto his face mid-sentence. “Who is also a spy.”

“An unlikely combination of professions.” Garak stayed reclined, but his face glowed with amused interest.

“Isn’t it? Anyway, there were about twenty of these novels. I haven’t read them since I was a teen, but now that I think of it, you might be interested in some of the parallels to Cekol’s stories. The ah – political priorities – differ, of course.”

“Naturally.”

“And they did have some grand adventures, but I was always more interested by the relationship between the Captain and the Doctor than the history per se.”

“How very like you.” The remark was tinged with sarcasm, but Bashir knew it was meant gently. “We’ll have to add it to the list, but perhaps you’d indulge me and tell me about these two dear friends.”

“Ah, well – the dashing Captain Aubrey is as cheerful and good-spirited as they come. On the other hand, Doctor Maturin is more of the miserable, cynical sort, possessed of a brilliant mind that can’t help but see the worst in the world.” Garak flashed him a look over the rim of his kanar glass that made him laugh aloud.

“What brings the unlikely pair together?”

“They have a shared passion for music that keeps them together through all the turmoil of war.” Bashir turned toward Garak and pulled his legs up onto the couch, folded between them. To his surprise, Garak responded by curling his tail loosely around his ankles. He smiled, took a sip of his toddy, and settled comfortably into his seat. “Of course,” he continued, “they also come to admire one another in their differences…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With due apologies to Patrick O'Brian... but honestly, what's the point of writing garashir if you don't make them talk about your favourite books? And I feel like Richard Bashir is 100% the kind of guy to have a (British) naval history phase.


	5. Chapter 5

Bashir woke to the insistent chirping of his com badge. “Doctor Bashir, it is 08:02 hours,” the voice repeated.

“Acknowledged,” he grumbled, slapping at the badge absently as he straightened his cramped neck. He blinked his eyes open, taking a moment to remember where he was. He looked around the room and found Garak sitting at the modest two-person dining table next to the replicator unit, watching him over the edge of a PADD. “When did I nod off?”

“Around 0600.”

“Thanks for letting me sleep. Hope you weren’t too bored while I was out.” He unfolded himself, stretched his stiff legs out along the length of the sofa.

“It would have felt cruel to wake you.” Garak indicated the place setting across from him. “I took the liberty of replicating a breakfast. We’re due in the Captain’s office in half an hour.”

Bashir beamed at the sight of a plate of scones with jam and cream, next to a steaming cup of Tarkalean tea. Ordering the food himself at the replicator would have taken mere seconds, but he was thoroughly charmed by the gesture nonetheless. He could have quickly counted the days since he’d last eaten the exact same meal at the exact same table. Instead he decided he would try to enjoy it as if it were the first time.

He stretched his arms over his head as he stood, reaching for the ceiling. He sat at the table across from Garak, inhaling the sweet smell of his breakfast, almost overpowering after weeks of prison rations. “Thank you.”

Garak inclined his head. “I replicated one of the new uniforms for you as well. Assuming you hadn’t ordered your own yet.”

Bashir sipped his tea, looking over at the desk where Garak had carefully folded the uniform. The unfamiliarity of that grey-shouldered jacket gnawed dully at him. He looked back to his breakfast. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Thank you.”

Garak set the PADD on the table, clearing his throat to divert the conversation. “While you were asleep, I started reading the first of the books we were discussing.”

“ _Master and Commander_?” Bashir asked around a mouthful of scone.

“I’m reading in the original English. The vocabulary is proving to be a modest challenge. The grammar deviates slightly from standard _Federaji_ in parts, if I’m not mistaken.”

“The writing is supposed to be period appropriate. Wait until you get to all the sails and ropes.”

“I suppose it’s my penance for Cekol,” Garak sighed, but there was a smile hiding behind it. “Perhaps you’ll share some of your seafaring wisdom.”

“More likely I’ll have to explain a lot of the jokes.”

“Puns do tend to lack a certain something when one is not a native speaker.”

“Cardassians like puns?”

“My dear, if our literary discussions have taught you anything it should be that Cardassians greatly enjoy wordplay.”

Bashir chuckled at the thought of rude Cardassian limericks. “I suppose you’ll have to pick up where you left off tutoring me in Kardasi,” he said into his plate, wolfing down the last of his scone.

When Garak failed to respond he looked up. A pang of affection stabbed at him when he saw the soft, slack-jawed expression on the Cardassian’s face. “I’d like that,” Garak said.

Bashir swallowed his last mouthful, noticing suddenly how the air seemed hot and thick. “We... could start tonight?”

He watched the deliberating double-blink of Garak’s nictitating membranes and eyelids.  “ Over dinner,  perhaps?”

“My quarters? I’ll turn up the heat,” Bashir added with a laugh as Garak’s mouth twisted with distaste. “I was thinking...” He licked his lips. “I think it might feel a bit more like home with you there.”

“I’ll bring a blanket.” Garak fluttered his feathers thoughtfully. “And I have... something else we might enjoy after dinner.” He stood from the table and went to his desk, and retrieved something from the first drawer. He passed it to Bashir – a familiar, unopened box of Delavian chocolates. “I couldn’t quite bring myself to eat them.” 

Bashir felt his chest ache desperately, staring at the box in his hand and remembering with painful clarity the last time he held it. He heard the muffled reverberation of his voice against the plasticrete walls of the detention centre,  and  the  long,  levelled exhale from the other side of the force field when he finished talking. 

When he looked up, Garak was holding his hand out. He set the chocolates down and put his hand in Garak’s, feeling the continuous surface of scales cool and smooth under his fingertips as he was pulled to his feet. “I missed you,” Bashir said softly. It was barely half the truth of how he felt, but he wasn’t sure he trusted his traitorous tongue with anything more.

Yet he couldn’t help a shallow gasp when Garak lifted his hand and pressed a lingering kiss to his knuckles. It was a decidedly un-Cardassian gesture, one he had never made before. And the hesitant look in the Garak’s face when he lifted his eyes did his aching heart no favours. His hand was then brought to the Cardassian’s chest, over his _chula,_ a mere inch away.

Bashir had been the one pursuing Garak the first time, when it became apparent that Garak would be content to do no more than flirt over lunch. Bashir led every step of their spirited dance, though Garak showed remarkable talent for following a lead. But he always waited for permission. And when Bashir ended things, his gut twisting with guilt and anger and grief, Garak’s complete lack of protest had stung most surprisingly. It was as if Garak had been waiting for permission to leave.

And now here he was, taking Bashir’s hand and offering his heart, or at least the closest Cardassian analogy. With a smile he closed the distance and pressed his palm to Garak’s _chula_ , felt the hard outline of the teardrop shape. Like so many other things about Garak, somehow it didn’t matter that he didn’t precisely understand the nature of the gesture. His forays into Cardassian literature gave him some idea, though, and the way Garak shifted his posture to lean against his hand gave him another.

“I missed you,” Garak murmured, closing his hand over Bashir’s on his chest. “Like the earth misses the moons.”

And who was telling whom to guard themselves against sentimentality, Bashir thought wryly. “Like a cold Cardassian misses a living bed warmer?” Garak narrowed his eyes, let his feathers flatten slightly. Bashir grinned, leaning in to touch his nose against Garak’s.

He felt a tail curling around his calf, an arm wrapping around his waist firmly – possessively, he ventured. The pressure on him was sublime, and Bashir melted to his touch, revelling in the sensation of their bodies pressing together. His free hand slipped up between them to touch the scales lining Garak’s jaw, his fingertips tracing the pattern of minute ridges and valleys, rereading a familiar page.

They kissed slowly, lips moving against each other with unhurried adoration. Garak’s clawed hands roamed carefully along his back, cupped the nape of his neck, held him with all the tenderness he imagined in his weakest, most wretched hours in the camp. All the while Bashir kept one hand against Garak’s _chula_ , hoping he was imparting the right gravity to the gesture, hoping the warmth of his palm was enough because it didn’t feel like he had much else to give.

“My dear Doctor,” Garak sighed, pulling away with evident reluctance. “We’ll be late.”

Bashir made a small noise of protest, stealing another quick kiss before they parted. “Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

Bashir headed to the desk to change into his new uniform. “You know, there’s a movie I wanted you to watch. I know, not your favourite medium. I won’t even promise that you’ll like it. But it’s interesting.” He slipped out of his thin undershirt, failing to suppress a smirk when he caught Garak eyeing his exposed body.

“What’s it about?”

“It’s a modern adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, Macbeth. Set during the Cardassian border wars.” Garak made a face, his feathers flaring out behind him in an exaggerated show of disdain. He was openly watching him now, his eyes lingering on the last slip of skin before Bashir pulled the zipper up on the turquoise shirt.

“I hope you don’t expect me to sit silently as some caricature of a gul delivers a monologue about how much he enjoys murdering Humans.”

“It’s not that kind of movie. It’s more about the folly of ambition. Human ambition, if you want to get into it.”

Garak made a quiet hiss, the Cardassian equivalent of a derisive sniff. “I would hardly trust Humans with thoughtful self-reflection.” He picked up Bashir’s jacket and held it open with an inviting tilt of his head.

“And Cardassians are so demure and introspective,” he scoffed in retort. Bashir shouldered into his jacket – a perfect fit, of course. It hung off him for a moment as Garak smoothed out the sleeves, and the brushing contact along his arms was far too tantalizing. He stepped away to zip up before turning around and gesturing to the entrance. “Shall we?”

Garak hesitated, shifted his eyes to the door and back. “Not concerned about being seen leaving my quarters together?”

“Not unless you are.”

They stared at each other, weighing intent and expectation and consequence. Garak relaxed into a fond smile. “Then we’d better get going. I hate being on the receiving end of a paternal look of disappointment, and the Captain has rather perfected it to an art, wouldn’t you say?”

“He has,” Bashir laughed. They made their way to the door, and somehow the fact that there was a whole galaxy outside it didn’t seem as daunting as it did yesterday.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, illustrations can be found [here](https://kaprosuchus.tumblr.com/post/173268098179)!
> 
> \--
> 
> Various borrowed Cardassian xenobiology headcanons:  
> \- the so'c: roughly equivalent to a reptilian jacobson's organ? can't remember where I first saw this idea crop up (sorry)  
> \- the tail: prehensile, because it's cute.  
> \- (head) feathers: my [light reinterpretation](https://kaprosuchus.tumblr.com/post/171603439364) of cardassians is pretty much still human-with-makeup, just like. with a cool feathered wig and more therapodian hands?


End file.
